


First Aid

by floweryhanzo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Cuddling, Depression, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 16:59:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12392283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryhanzo/pseuds/floweryhanzo
Summary: Some battles have ceasefires. Others are constant.





	First Aid

**Author's Note:**

> Written to Dustin O'Halloran's [_We Move Lightly_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BYe-UfzgPk).

* * *

 

* * *

 

Rubber mattresses line the walls of the room. Some of them are taken by dark shapes like cocoons wrapped in their thin, black heat retaining military blankets over travel pillows with backpacks, gym bags and messenger bags untidily set in the limited spaces between the makeshift beds. Genji enters the room through the door which closes behind him with one more silent hissing sound; other than for the blue-glowing seams around the doorway indicating an escape path in case of a fire alarm or other emergency, the room is entirely dark - if not for one display screen set against the wall in front of a mattress, displaying a muted news channel running constant updates on the situation outside. Genji examines the shape of his brother, sitting on his knees on the mattress with his outline illuminated by the news reports. He’s wrapping a bandage around his tattooed arm, eyes set on the screen with a concentrated look on him, and something in Genji aches at the sight. He shifts weight from one foot to the other, glancing at the free mattresses around the room, but as a shiver rushes through his reinforced spine he pushes himself forwards, taking direction towards Hanzo instead.

”Hey,” he mumbles quietly - warmly, timidly - as he lowers himself to sit on the limited space left on Hanzo’s side, ”How bad is it?”

Hanzo’s eyes visit his shape, taking measure of him before he nods as if to himself and drops his gaze to his arm instead.

”I will live,” he tells Genji in a low, gruff growl, then holds out his arm, index and middle fingers holding the end of the bandage in place, ”Could you?”

”Sure.”

Genji takes over - he presses the bandage down as Hanzo secures it with a clip. Once it’s done, he relaxes his hands onto his lap and turns back for the news.

”It seems quiet now,” he says, and Genji takes a moment to analyze the images of devastation playing on the device.

Hanzo’s right: for the night, the battle seems to have ceased.

”It will resume at first light,” Genji says absently.

”That is in the future.”

”What is in the present?”

A small, crooked smile crosses Hanzo’s lips. He shakes his head.  
”I intended to sleep, but the ache is keeping me up.”

”Do you think you can still support your bow with that?”

For a moment, Hanzo looks at his hands on his lap, turning the injured arm around and fisting and unfisting his fingers with some care. Finally, he nods, returning his gaze to the device in favour of facing his brother. Genji nods, too; the silence lingers for some time, rhythmically pierced by a soft snore from across the room.

”Would it not help you get some rest if you were, at least, not dressed for battle?” he finally asks with a hint of gentle tease in his voice.

His heart races at it - at the feeble attempt at bringing back these other tones to their relationship, the ones well outside the careful, polite approach they’ve adopted instead of the familiar, natural pace and flow of the way they used to interact before. He notices the tension that hits and lifts from Hanzo’s form, as if startled, uncomfortable, afraid, and wonders whether the reason was in his tone or in something else altogether. The short glance Hanzo aims downwards, his gaze not quite meeting any part of him or of their surroundings before he catches this instinctive giveaway, tells Genji that it was not a reaction to his approach, however.

With a sigh, Genji reaches past the rugged-looking canvas pouch containing Hanzo’s first-aid supplies, catches the side of his bag and drags it over. He hears a choked sound, a complaint, from his brother’s direction when he shoves his hands in the opening and starts digging through the man’s belongings, but Hanzo doesn’t stop him; much like Genji feared, he doesn’t seem to have much to hide.

It doesn’t take long for Genji to drag out a shirt he recognises as nightwear; he places it on Hanzo’s lap with a small, almost playful glimmer in his eyes, and Hanzo’s expression softens as he lowers his gaze back to his lap. He strokes his fingers over the fabric and sighs, glancing quickly at Genji before turning back to the news.

”The situation might change unexpectedly,” he argues, but his voice lacks the firmness that would make it absolute. Now, it’s merely hesitant.

”You said yourself that that was the future, not our present. Should we not concentrate on the now, anija?”

Their gazes meet. Genji slumps down over the side of his hips, runs his hand through his hair with his fingertips brushing over the reinforcing frames embedded into his facial bones, and a small smile lingers on him as he watches his brother struggle with himself.

”Ne, Hanzo. One painkiller won’t interfere with your aim, and taking off your gear now won’t mean that you have to rush into battle naked.”

”I don’t know, Genji.”

Another soft sigh escapes Genji. He drags himself closer, watching his brother tense up again, but he refuses to mind it; his fingertips seek the knot of the sash around his waist and he undoes it, the sensors along the sides of his arms reacting to the warmth radiating from the other’s body. He avoids looking at Hanzo - it’s been too long since they last touched, since there was last so little distance between them that he could feel the heat of his skin, but he’s missed it so much that he’ll take the excuse to indulge now, even if he doesn’t have it in him to see if he had the permission, or if he’s still welcome. He runs the sash over his fist until it’s all folded, and then he pulls it off and places it inside the bag on top of the mess he’s made there. Afterwards, his eyes still avoiding Hanzo’s with some extreme deliberation, he reaches his hands up into the man’s hair next, pulling the yellow cloth from around his ponytail. Swiftly, he looks back down at his hands as he folds that sash just like he did the other one and hides it in the bag, but he’s relieved when he sees Hanzo shrug off the sleeve from over his tattooed shoulder, continuing from where Genji left off. Quietly, Genji backs off to give him space, but the quickly re-emerging stillness brings his gaze back to his brother soon enough.

Hanzo’s fingertips linger over the ridged shape of his yugake - there’s a conflicted look on his face, and Genji can’t miss the way his eyes turn in his direction, catch the sight of him watching, and swiftly turn away again as if to pretend that he never looked. He seems to shiver a little, but when Genji reaches in and takes his gloved hand, he doesn’t resist, merely lets it happen as still and tense as he was before, his eyes unmoving and staring at nothing. Genji watches him for a while, his ears picking the strain in his breath and his brows furrowing at the stillness in his body, and when he looks down at the hand he’s holding and returns to the task he took upon himself, he feels a little cold in his fingers. Still, without showing his own hesitation, he pulls off the glove and sets it beside the bed, watching the black of Hanzo’s sleeve fall over the exposed arm. His eyes catch the sight of something there, and his gaze flickers up to his brother’s expression, which remains visibly - concerned? Afraid? He can’t tell for certain.

”Hanzo?”

Hanzo nods, the gesture slow and unfocused, his gaze never moving. A shaky breath leaves Genji and his hand shakes a little as he turns around the hand he’s holding, his other hand moving in to gently drag back the long, wide sleeve covering the wrist and the arm. For the first time, he feels Hanzo pull back, but not with enough force to really achieve anything - it’s simply a twitch, an instinctive attempt to get away without the force of will behind the act that would imply that he truly wanted to do so.

The device screen beside them shines a soft light upon Hanzo’s skin. It draws a blurred outline of light over every thick scar running over the length of the underside of his arm, and illuminates the raw edges of the fresher cuts along the middle, each injury deliberate and determined. Genji’s seen enough wounds caused by the edge of a blade to read the anger in the slashes, the hatred and the bitterness that dictates the pattern of them, and the deep, personal hurt that controls the depth to which the blade has sunken - like witnessing a sample of a murder scene, where each line etched into his brother’s skin speaks the language of inescapable disappointment, of the pain of betrayal, of loss.

His heart oddly quiet, as if suppressed, he lifts his gaze back to Hanzo’s face, lowers their hands over his brother’s lap and, with his free arm, pulls the other man against his body. He holds him tightly, feeling the limp defeat in the way Hanzo neither resists nor complies, knowing he expects judgement - a rejection, an acknowledgement, a word of pity - to fall out of Genji’s mouth, but nothing does. Instead, they both shiver against one another, breaths falling heavy and restricted to the spaces behind their bodies, and Genji fights the prickling in his eyes, closing them to let the growing wetness seep into his lashes instead of giving it the chance to trickle down his cheeks.

They take minutes like that, alone in the silent presence of others unaware of theirs, until Genji finally moves down his arm from around Hanzo’s body and, blindly, digs his hand inside the first-aid pouch instead. His fingers wrap around the soft form of a bandage roll, and he draws in a shaky breath as the only hint of the noose tightening around his throat.

”Don’t,” Hanzo says, his fingertips pressing against his wrist and his palm covering the rest of his arm from Genji’s view.

”Why not?” Genji asks him, his voice sharp, desperate, as he releases the end of the roll in his hands from the second layer of fabric beneath it despite Hanzo’s words, a flash of stubborness, like flame, licking at his ribs from the inside out.

”Treating them with the same care as one would the injuries sustained in battle would only make my shame worse. They do not deserve your attention, or anyone’s; such weakness is disgraceful, and I should bear the consequences of it as they come.”

Snarling, Genji pushes his hand away from his way.

”Bullshit,” he utters, pinning the end of the bandage to the middle of Hanzo’s wrist with his thumb and bringing the roll around his arm for the first time to tie it there, ”You draw your bow with this hand. The last thing it needs is an infection.”

He expects - wants - Hanzo to complain, but instead, the other man simply turns his head away. They sit in silence, Genji wrapping more and more bandage around the exposed injuries with such determination that one would think he was attempting to undo them altogether, until the roll ends and there’s nothing more to do. Still shaking with adrenaline, Genji returns Hanzo’s hand back on his lap and drags down the sleeve over it until it pools around his hand and Hanzo finally takes it off. The cloth slides off his body, and with a slowed-down movement, he turns to pick it up and folds it neatly beside his bed with the glove. Just as slowly he crouches up from the mattress and pulls the light grey shirt over his body: its hem reaches far below his hips, and once it’s fallen all the way there, he stands up altogether to first unfasten his pantlegs from below his knees and then, with a visible shudder, to drop them altogether. When he sits back down, Genji pulls him back into a hug, and this time, Hanzo returns it. The fabric of his bandages feel rough against Genji’s back but his hold is firm and his scent and his body warm, and Genji buries his face into the crook of his neck and shoulder, his nose smushing against the bump of his collarbone beneath the softness of his shirt. He feels very small there, suddenly years younger than a moment earlier, and an uncanny feeling of having been lost seeps into his being, like only a panicked child now protected by a familiar embrace would feel.

”It is a battle, Hanzo,” he breathes out as he draws back, pulls up and presses his forehead and his still warm nose against his brother’s, his palms pressing over the older’s ears and fingertips shifting into the thick of his hair, ”And fighting it is not dishonourable, nor is it a sign of weakness.”

He feels the other man shivering against him, and then the heavy drop of a tear hitting the side of his arm. Genji brushes his thumbs across Hanzo’s cheeks and draws in another shaky breath, then releases him, and returns the safe distance between them. With a flick of his fingertips over the device’s screen he turns it off, then aims a gaze towards his brother in the remaining glow of the blue in the door’s frames behind them.

”I do not want to leave you tonight,” he tells him in a low but clear voice, each word separated by its weight from the previous one spoken.

”Good, since there would be very little room for you to do so,” Hanzo says, his voice flickering with the same dry tease as Genji’s before, and the sheer comfort of it feels like a dagger between Genji’s ribs even though he knows it’s only there to cover up the confusion in the wake of the words he’s deflecting.

”You know perfectly well what I mean.”

”It would hardly be appropriate. We are no longer boys but grown men, and there are other people here.”

”I don’t care, Hanzo - and if someone else does, then I invite them to try and move me.”

”I will.”

”No, you won’t.”

They stare at one another for a moment before finally, Hanzo draws in a long breath that escapes as a short, heavy huff; he shrugs and slips down onto the bed on his side, tucking his arm underneath the pillow.

”Very well,” he says then, closing his eyes, ”These are your friends and allies, after all, and it is your reputation amongst them that you risk - not mine. Do as you wish.”

”Nice. I will.”

Genji joins him, dragging Hanzo’s blanket over them. He slips his arm around his brother’s side and curls up beside him, head tucked underneath his chin with the coarse hair of Hanzo’s jawline prickling against his scalp. He breathes in deep and relaxes there, the older brother’s hand moving over his side, onto his back and then over the metallic bumps of the back of his neck, and he feels Hanzo press him closer, cradle him just as he used to do when Genji was still just a kid, welcoming his presence there much unlike Genji expected.

 _I’ve missed you so much_ , he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how to, so he just holds on tighter in return.

 


End file.
